Peter J. Shippy : poet

An edifiable moment

There came a point in the poetry anthology where everyone to the left was dead and everyone to the right was alive—save one who had died young and one who was living long. I instructed my students to rip these poets from the book and let them swap places. I provided thread and glue. After, I asked them to open their anthology—from the Greek: anthologia; flower gathering—to the point where everyone to the left was dead and everyone to the right was alive. Caesura, I said. A pause in a line of verse, from the Latin: a cutting.